Royals Make Me Feel Twelve Again!

Man oh man! To be a resident of the Kansas City area these last couple of weeks has been amazing. It’s been like a dream. The whole Kansas City area is happy! Mizzou fans, Kansas Jayhawks fans, and KSU fans are all harmonious with one another in their KC Royals fandom.

The Royals have, as of right now, won 6 straight MLB playoff games this year. And dating back to 1985, they have won nine playoff games in a row. We are watching something historic, as the whole country has begun to love the formerly lovable losers, the KC Royals. We are winners now!

Starting out on Monday Night Football, I took my 12-year-old son to Arrowhead Stadium, September 29th, to see the Kansas City Chiefs take on the New England Patriots.

In that game, the Chiefs curb-stomped the Patriots. I mean, they kicked the shit out of them 41-14. That is an ass-whomping, if I’ve ever seen one. Versus Gray Hoodie, Tom Brady and the Patriots? What? What?! That’s unheard of. Whoomp, There it is!

I’m not a big TV guy. However, I love comedy. Laughing is my favorite thing aside from “bah chicka bah bah” time. 🙂 Having done improv and stand-up comedy since the mid-90s, it takes something special to get my seal of comedy approval. And I can say, unequivocally, that Impractical Jokers is the funniest thing that I’ve ever seen. I can’t even tell you what is second place. Impractical Jokers is that funny.

So, whenever I happen to watch an episode, I’m always tweeting about how funny it was.READ MORE »

Most of the time, people will use social media to bitch about something or some brand online. Rarely will people take the time to write a blog post PRAISING a company.

Hold your breath, folks, I’m about to do just that. The Facebook F8 Conference was amazing. A McDonald’s employee went OUT OF HER WAY for me in a big way on Sunday. And United made me breathe a sigh of relief, I’ll tell you why.READ MORE »

Drove to Topeka, KS this morning, as my daughter’s cheerleading team was a finalist in the US Cheerleading National Finals! Out of all of the 8 year old cheerleading teams in the US, my daughter’s team placed fifth. I never thought my daughter would be a cheerleader, but after she expressed interest, we figured it would be infinitely better than sitting on the couch all the time. So far, she’s loved it.

My first tech startup, MethodLaboratories was a big web project that started with an idea from my good friend, Jonathan Shaun.

Methodlabs was where we featured artists, musicians, filmmakers, designers, and other creatives, gave them free webspace, showcased their work and even created t-shirts for the artists and designers that submitted their work.

To make the project a reality, I learned and mastered HTML, CSS & Javascript, as well as designing the whole project.

We also brought in the talented Alexander Petrides, who helped do all of the tough, custom modifications on the code. He actually built the Dropbox-like feature, and helped customize our user profiles system and many other things. Together, we grew the concept into a large web property with tens of thousands of members.

I tweet a lot. And I tweet about many different topics. Many of my followers don’t give a flying shit about many of the topics that I’d otherwise like to talk about.

You can segment people with lists, so that can filter their broadcasts, however, you can’t select an audience to deliver certain tweets to, outside of a hashtag. I propose they fix this, as it’s in their best interest for advertising targeting.

For instance, I live in Kansas City and have always loved watching the Kansas City Royals. Let’s say I’m watching the Royals game and I want to tweet about it… There is a browser with Twitter open at the ready, my mobile phone is right here, also… and I have a browser open of the Royals playing. READ MORE »

Growing up, I was a bit of a chubby lad. But, once I discovered the ladies, I figured that I’d better get into good shape… so near the end of my junior year of high school, through the summer into my senior year, I dropped a lot of pounds with discipline and hard work. I became a very fit 180 lbs young man.

I was successful in keeping the weight off for several years. Then, I got started working in the tech industry, sitting on my ass daily, got married… and BOOM the pounds came on in a fury. Over the next 15 years, I bet I’ve put on and lost over 400 pounds. I’d gain 25lbs, I’d lose 15. I’d gain 20 more, and then I’d lose 10. Then I’d go on a Mountain Dew addiction binge, and gain another 25 lbs… until now, where I’m near 300lbs. THREE. HUNDRED. POUNDS. That’s like five or six 3rd graders. READ MORE »

Today is an interesting day. Finally, a state in the United States of America is allowing the legal sales of marijuana and marijuana products. Many are discussing the merits of whether or not we should be able to smoke it. I want to point out something far more significant and a far greater opportunity than the business of getting high. I’m talking about hemp.

When you say marijuana, I always flip the switch back to hemp. Marijuana is actually the spanish word for hemp. The only difference is that the flower bud of the hemp plant happens to be smokeable. The rest of the hemp plant is way more important than the smokeable flower, however.

The real reason that hemp/marijuana was made illegal is because you can make paper, plastic, fuel, clothes, medicine and food from it. So naturally, it threatened the paper industry, the oil industry, the plastic industry, the alcohol industry, the pharmaceutical industry and others. Those industries all happen to have some pretty strong lobbyist groups. Especially back in the 1930s.READ MORE »

I fly so much. This year alone, I’ve flown over 50,000 miles and I’m closing on 100,000 miles. Most of the flights are booked by other people on my behalf for clients, and quite frankly, I can’t stand most of the people in the travel industry, namely TSA and the “America Patdowns” I get with each flight. [I opt out of the radioactive scanners] Needless to say, I don’t always double check the itineraries in time… and that bit me in the ass this evening.

I fly out tomorrow from San Francisco to Phoenix and I thought I had an 11 hour layover… this was intentional. What you say? An 11 hour INTENTIONAL layover? Yeah.

One of my good friends disappeared in 2006, he went homeless and unaccounted for. Last June, they found him face down in the Arizona desert, with vultures flying over his head, almost dead. He had been in a flight with spinal meningitis, unbeknownst to him… and then he got Death Valley Fever. He was 130lbs, and was comatose for almost 100 days.

This Travis Wright guy shares marketing resources, industry analysis, interwebs strategery & random hilarity along w/ occasional sport or political rants. If you can stand his jokes and want his opinion on something, feel free to connect with him.